More local residents getting seasonal jobs

January 22, 2013|By Marcia Heroux Pounds, Sun Sentinel

Palm Beach County officials say hotels and country clubs continue to whittle down the number of foreign workers they bring in for the tourist season, part of an ongoing effort to trim the county's unemployment rate.

Workforce Alliance, the county employment agency, reports that nearly 750 local residents have been hired in full-time and seasonal positions at clubs or resorts since July 2011 compared to 169 placements from July 2010 through June 2011.

Most of the placements in Palm Beach County have been with the Boca Resort & Spa, Boca West, St. Andrews, Addison Reserve and Hunters Run, as well as some staffing agencies, according to Workforce Alliance.

"We felt it was the right thing to do," said Peter Serena, general manager of the Boca Raton Resort. The hotel, he said, stopped hiring foreign workers about four years ago.

More than 8,000 servers, cooks, spa technicians and other workers typically are hired in Palm Beach County each tourist season, which runs from November to March. About 1,700 foreign workers were hired by local clubs and resorts for the 2011-12 season.

But faced with an unemployment rate in Palm Beach County as high as 12 percent in 2010, the alliance began working with area country clubs in July 2011 to hire more local workers as servers and other positions needed for the tourism season.

Palm Beach County employers also are submitting fewer requests for the documents employers must file prior to obtaining the H2B visas all foreign workers must have to work in the United States, according to the alliance. Between 2011 and 2012, the number of "alien certificate job orders" dropped 51 percent from 1870 to 960.

The number of H2B visas for 2012 will not be available until later this year, but they were on the decline before the initiative was launched: a 31 percent drop from 2010 to 2011 going from 1,478 to 1,027.

Still, even as Palm Beach hotels and country clubs push to rely less on foreign workers, President Obama's inaugural speech Monday highlighted a push to increase the number of temporary workers.

Florida business leaders are supporting immigration legislation that would bring in more temporary foreign workers while legalizing most of the state's illegal workforce. Recent proposals from U.S. Sen. Mario Rubio, R-Fla., are giving a boost to the president's plan to overhaul the immigration system. The plan includes a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

"We certainly support the hospitality industry. If there's enough local workers to fill the spots, we're completely OK with that," said Leticia Adams, director of government policy at the Florida Chamber of Commerce. But she said businesses also need the option of increasing their foreign workers when they can't find the workers needed.

"The agriculture industry tells us they put up billboards and go to agencies and they still can't get enough workers," Adams said. That's when they turn to foreign workers. "We don't want federal government or state policies to hinder that."

High technology workers also are in short supply, she said. While thousands of students in Florida are studying science, technology and math to enter the field, the industry doesn't currently have an "adequate workforce," she said.

There also aren't enough crane operators to support expansion of the ports in the state or enough truck drivers, Adams said.

To expand the workforce, "we have a general push for training and education," she said.